Potato Stamping

[Disclaimer: Most tutorials have really pretty, clearly-lit, focused photos. I'm not a professional blogger and I have a lot to do during the day, so I made this while the sun was setting/after it set. The photos aren't amazing, but I think you can at least see the steps. It's a miracle that I remembered to take pictures of the process at all, hah!].

John bought me some nice shoes last week, so I decided to make something for him (I don't buy shoes). I wanted to do something with Instagram pictures, but I wasn't sure what. I initially thought I'd mod-podge some book pages on a cardboard background and then put the pictures on top. But then I realized I wanted something a little more guy-ish. I decided to do some potato stamping (which I haven't done since I was really little) because it would allow me to have a bold pattern and color.

If you haven't done potato stamping before, the idea is to cut a shape on the end of the potato, dip it in paint, and use it just like a rubber stamp. To start, I sliced the end off the potato (so I'd have a flat edge). Then I cut a triangle shape. You want your shape to be raised, so everything around the shape needs to be cut away.

Here you can see that the triangle shape is raised.

You can cut any shape you'd like, but I decided to keep mine simple and small, since the Instagram pictures I used in my project would end up covering a lot of the stamping. After the potato stamp is ready, pour some paint (I used navy blue acrylic) onto a paper plate and dip the stamp in. I used a sheet of white paper to practice stamping on first, since changing the amount of paint/pressure can change the look of your stamp.

I found that I preferred to dip the potato, stamp it once on my practice sheet to remove the excess paint, and then stamp my real paper background [I used heavy card stock]. It takes some practice.

After the paper is dry, it's time to put the pictures on. For this project I just used Photoshop to make a grid of 1x1 Instagrams, but you could also use PostalPix and have them print out a collage of your pictures (I have the app on my iPhone). 

I used Scotch Photo Splits to attach my pictures, and that worked perfectly for me because they're repositionable and I did have to adjust a few of my rows. Turns out I can't draw straight lines OR place pictures in straight lines.

Once everything was attached, I put the paper in a frame.

You could always use regular scrapbook paper to be the background for your frame, but the stamping is really fun and interesting and I've seen designs like this all over. It's an easy way to display multiple Instagram pictures.